Author Archives: Kevin Ward

It’s simple actually… You have to start by gaining someone’s trust! If you decide that you want to record your cousin’s rock band, then make sure that you do it as if you were getting paid the “big bucks” for it… even if you are doing it for free. When people see that you are…

For me, mixing at Low Levels is a basic strategy in mixing, but I thought it was crazy too when I first heard the idea over 20 years ago. Thats why I want to give you MY top 3 reasons for mixing at lower levels. Because everything sounds good loud– If you can make your…

Back in the day, when there were only 24 tracks to record to, we used to save one track to put the vocal on. We had to make some pretty critical “last minute” decisions on whether to keep a “pretty good” performance or try for “the Grammy” performance. That was pretty AWESOME!… can we do…

Anytime you do a session in your studio, whether it’s your basement, your bedroom, or your high-dollar converted garage, make sure that your studio looks like a professional environment. … If you are operating out of a dedicated space, there are even a few more things you can do to make your clients feel like recording is more than just your hobby…

I was conducting a recording clinic at a local music store a few weeks ago. One of the questions I got was from a recording student about panning. He said, “I was listening to a mix the other day and things were panned in such a way that the instruments sounded like the were floating…

Snare hits vs. Side sticks Sometimes when you are mixing a great song, you want certain parts of the drums to be louder than the drummer played them. In this case, I wanted a drummers side stick to really “sing” in the track. I liked the amount of natural sounding compression that I had on…

Hey guys, I just finished up a walkthrough of this month’s song over on MixCoach Pro Member called “Cool Yule”, by TaRanda Greene. It’s a really fun song just in time for the holiday’s, with a Big Band feel that is a ton of fun to mix. In the walkthrough video I talk about 3 of…

Some people think that in a world of 7.1, 5.1 Stereo monitoring, that mono has somehow become irrelevant. This couldn’t be more false. In this video, I show you a simple tool to listen to your mixes in absolutely the worse way you can so that you won’t be surprised with how your mix sounds.…

Hey guys. Here is another edition of the feedback Friday. In this episode, we are giving feedback on a song we mixed from Rolfe Wyer called “Breakaway”. I produced this song in Nashville with some of the best players and singers available. This is just a taste of what you will get if you join…